AWS Spends $650M To Buy Talen’s Data Center At Nuclear Station; Commits $5 Billion To Saudi Arabia

AWS pours billions into expanding its data center footprint both in the U.S. and overseas, with the acquisition of a Pennsylvania data center campus, and new massive commitment to the Kingdom of Saudia Arabia.

Cloud market leader Amazon Web Services has acquired a data center campus from Talen Energy that is located at a nuclear power station in Pennsylvania.

Amazon purchased Talen’s data center campus, known as Cumulus Data, for $650 million, according to a Talen investor presentation. The sale included all the land, power infrastructure, powered shell and intangibles on the data center campus.

Seattle-based AWS is set to develop up to a 960MW data center campus in the area located in northeast Pennsylvania.

“We are pleased today to have sold our Cumulus data center campus, unlocking significant value for Talen,” said Talen’s CEO and president, Mac McFarland, in a statement on Monday. “This transaction provides an attractive return on Talen's investment and vision in building Cumulus, and creates value through the sale of clean carbon-free power from our top-decile Susquehanna nuclear plant."

AWS has two 10-year extension options tied to nuclear license renewals, according to Talen’s investor presentation, as well as a minimum contractual power commitments that ramp up in 120 MW increments over several years.

Talen said it will supply direct-connect, carbon-free power to the AWS data center campus as it is built. Under a separate agreement, Talen will also receive additional revenue from AWS related to sales of carbon-free energy to the grid.

AWS is one of the largest spenders on building and buying data centers on a global basis, which power its cloud services and house its infrastructure.

AWS Commits $5.3 Billion To Saudi Arabia

On Monday, AWS also unveiled that it will invest a whopping $5.3 billion in Saudi Arabia over the coming years.

AWS will build a new AWS infrastructure Region in Saudi Arabia with plans to open its doors in 2026.

The huge investment paves the way for AWS to support Saudi Arabia’s digital transformation on AWS cloud infrastructure and meet the high demand for cloud services across the Middle East, said Prasad Kalyanaraman, vice president of Infrastructure Services at AWS in a statement today.

“The new AWS Region will enable organizations to unlock the full potential of the cloud and build with AWS technologies like compute, storage, databases, analytics, and artificial intelligence, transforming the way businesses and institutions serve their customers,” Kalyanaraman said. “We look forward to helping Saudi Arabian institutions, startups, and enterprises deliver cloud-powered applications to accelerate growth, productivity, and innovation and spur job creation, skills training, and educational opportunities.”

The new AWS Region will consist of three Availability Zones at launch, adding to the existing 105 Availability Zones across 33 geographic regions globally.

Looking ahead, AWS has plans to launch 18 more Availability Zones and six more AWS Regions in Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Thailand, and the AWS European Sovereign Cloud.

AWS data centers and cloud regions power the company’s vast portfolio of cloud services and infrastructure.